


firewater, comets and craters

by sepulchralsymphonies



Series: a man and his muse [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - War, Angst and Tragedy, Background Shiro/Adam, M/M, There's a war, it's set in a fictional town in altea, naval captain lance, naval commander hunk, this story starts off nice and then it rips your heart out im sorry, town boy keith, war veterans shiro and adam, yeah people are going to die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepulchralsymphonies/pseuds/sepulchralsymphonies
Summary: In the town of Westingwood lies a grave, a little way off, under the shade of an ancient oak tree.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: a man and his muse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581634
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17





	firewater, comets and craters

**Author's Note:**

> get some tissues ready.  
> also, this is hands down one of my best works so far and i'm super proud of it, happy reading!

_The moon streams in through lapses in the flutter of the curtains, washing over rumpled blankets in ribbons of pale silver. The breeze is gentle with the slightest tang of cool moisture, fog rolling in huge swathes of grey off the surface of the bay. It curls in a silent serpentine dance around the base of squat stone buildings, twisting round their ankles with gentle accompanying hisses. The air seems charged with a faint buzz of electricity, whispering the promise of an incoming storm._

_Keith draws his knees closer to his chest, circling his arms around them as he looks out at the sea. A bitter taste crawls its way beneath his tongue, sitting like sandpaper in his mouth as he gazes out the panes of the half open window. A small rustle sounds from the room behind him but he doesn’t turn his head to see, holding in his breath instead of swiveling around to look. He isn’t sure he is ready to have this conversation, at least not yet._

_An uncomfortable sensation begins roiling around in the pits of Keith’s stomach the longer he sits along the length of the bay window, body hunched in over himself and vacant eyes trained out to where the skies met the seas. A few merchant vessels line the pier, bobbing up and down with every gentle swell of the waters. Keith hears the rustle of bedsheets behind him again, followed by a long drawn out groan. He leans forward, laying his cheek on his knee. The soft padding of feet against the carpeted floor seems to resonate in his ears the closer it draws. Keith inhales deeply, letting his eyelids drop shut._

_“The bed is warmer,” he says quietly._

_A pair of arms worm their way around his waist as a warm weight settles behind him. The man stifles a yawn, tugging Keith’s pliant body towards his chest. “What are you doing here?”_

_“The wind,” Keith remarks, “it’s sharp tonight.”_

_“You see those waves crashing against the hull?” Lance points out, lifting an arm to gesture at the ships docked sullenly along the pier. A flicker of silver dashes along the honeyed bronze of his skin, and his arm drops back to Keith’s lap. “A storm is on its way.”_

_Keith’s mouth moves before he even has a chance to mull over the weight of his words. “Maybe you should head home, then.”_

_Lance stills for a moment, the muscles in his arms cording uncomfortably. He inhales deeply, chest grazing against Keith’s tense back before he lets out an exhausted sigh. “That’s cold,” he mumbles, chin dropping onto his shoulder._

_Keith flinches as the warm breath washes over his skin. His own fingers drop down briefly to the rock hard flesh over Lance’s hands. “You said it yourself,” he murmurs, running the pad of his thumb devotedly over the razor edges of his knuckles. He’s filled with the sudden desire to swoop down and brush his lips over the skin, perhaps they’d still carry the grit and dust from the quarries that skirted the town. “You should fix yourself up with a nice glass of whiskey once it hits.”_

_Lance’s arms tighten around his waist. The edge of his elbow digs almost painfully into Keith’s ribs. “Where is all this coming from, sweetheart?” His voice is clipped and measured, carefully pruned and honed from years of practice. This is the voice of a man who has scrubbed his hands clean of blood and grime, and survived._

_“You should go, Lance,” Keith speaks gently, curling his fingers around the other man’s wrists to tug them free. Lance’s knuckles whiten as he hesitates, holding his stance for a long drawn-out moment, and then he’s ripping his arms away and sliding to his feet._

_Keith almost doesn’t turn. He is terrified to see what the man looks like, but the blood in his veins is as traitorous as he is. It sings and seethes and burns until he twists around, knees bunched in front of him._

_Lance looks exhausted, pale and haggard. “There’s only so many times I’ll return when you keep tossing me away like that, love.”_

_“Then, don’t.”_

_Lance’s hands freeze on the buckle of his belt. “What did you say?”_

_“Don’t return, Lance,” Keith repeats, swallowing harshly when he feels the tell-tale burn of acid in his throat. “It’s not worth it.”_

_“It’s not—” Lance repeats in disbelief, eyes widened with surprise. His lips curl around the words, breathing them to himself silently before he shakes his head once, firmly. A stray lock of hair slips past his ear and drapes itself along the polished edge of his cheekbone, and it reminds Keith of a beast curled against the bleak landscape. “It’s not worth it? Keith, it’s not worth it?”_

_“There’s only so many times I’ll toss you away before you wash up at the chapel, Lance,” Keith says, and smiles. “Do you have your suit picked out for you, yet?”_

_Lance’s face crumples. He strides forward, coming to a stop before Keith. “You know I’m trying.”_

_“I know you’re trying,” Keith nods, and looks away. A group of men pass by the street two blocks over, their silhouettes swaying drunkenly in the moonlight. They’re singing an old sailor’s song, loud and brash and unguarded, not a care in the world._

_Lance’s hand cups the side of his face, pulling it towards him. “Is that not enough?”_

_Keith lifts his own hand to wrap it around his, blinking rapidly. The burn in his eyes is searing, and he focuses instead of the clear blue of Lance’s. He shakes his head. “It isn’t,” he manages to choke out. “Lance, it isn’t.”_

_“But I’m trying!” Lance explodes, tearing his hand away as he paces the room in frustration. Keith’s hand drops limply onto the cool stone as he simply watches Lance walk fiercely around the little room, sinking his fingers into his hair. “You_ know _I’m trying! Why is that—” He stops, peering tiredly at him, face lined with bitter struggle and bitter days. “—why is that not enough for you?”_

_“And am I not trying?” Keith snaps, rising from his perch by the window. Lance’s frantic eyes turn to him, apologetic and drained. “Am I not being a fool, dragging this along when I know where this will end up?”_

_“Keith, please.” Lance sounds pained._

_“You will dare to name your first born after me,” Keith spits, hair curling in the breeze. “But I would choose the gallows over that any day, Lance.”_

_Lance looks pale. “Sweetheart,_ no _, no, I would_ never _—”_

_“Go.”_

_“So, is this it?” Lance asks, stooping to snatch his shirt off the back of a chair. “Will we ever meet again?”_

_“I hope we do not,” Keith whispers, as Lance crosses the room to kneel by his side._

_“I shall pray for fortune to favour us one more time,” Lance smiles, his lips brushing against Keith’s temple. “My soul shall know peace only when I die in your arms.”_

_“Be careful what you wish for, Leandro,” Keith says, and his voice breaks._

_“I wished for you, didn’t I?” Lance says. He throws one last glance over his shoulder, it’s long and searching, strangely peaceful and composed on the harshly lettered strokes of his face. The breeze swoops in, the curtains billow and he is gone._

.

The first time Keith sees him, the youngest of the McClain children is pressing his betrothed into the wall bordering the apothecary, and his skin is the striking bronze of polished pennies.

Keith steps out the doors, his shoes making a pleasant clack as they strike against the gleaming white marble inlaid along the stairs. For all the garbled talk of the upcoming spring festival, Westingwood really does seem to have outdone itself this year round. Hand stitched banners flail in the wind, snapping and dancing precariously like the guttering flame of a candle close to burning out. Tall wooden poles and lampposts stand erect along the winding curl of the main street, woven through with flowers speckled like foam along a tumultuous river bank. The air hangs heavy, drenched with sugar and spice, the sky a dazzling expanse of robin's egg blue, and the passing breeze whispers promises of mulled mead and chilled wine. The town rarely hosts festivals like these anymore, not since the first war that had sent home more of the dead than the people had dug enough graves for. The spring festival is a small assurance that Westingwood heals, bit by bit. It's a start.

A small gaggle of older women stand together near the cobbled pathway cutting a clean trail through the lawns. The sun beats down upon their starched white dresses and pastel parasols, and Keith hears a few overjoyed giggles and small coos of adoration. Colleen Holt peeks through the shade of her penumbra, her kind face stretched into a smile. "Oh, Keith, there you are, darling. Come along now, let me introduce you to the Garretts here.

As it turns out, the family in question are gentle and polite creatures, seemingly made out of soft tufts of cotton clouds and amused crow's feet adorning their eyes. Keith bows lower than lady Garrett herself in polite introduction, and she smiles warmly at him when he straightens up again, her face and eyes alight with maternal affection. Hunk is a tall and strapping young man with broad shoulders and skin the colour of baked chestnut, and he grins at Keith in the friendly manner of familiars before he asks him about his profession and parentage. Keith doesn't hesitate in answering honestly, something about the man radiates a homely feeling and before long, the two of them have excused themselves to walk back down the main street so Keith can show him around.

The Garretts come from wealth, Keith learns. Hunk’s father had served as an intelligence officer in the first war, and the horrors he'd seen had left him too riddled with fright to ever dare go down that path again. Hunk, on the other hand, having grown in a mansion by the sea and tumbled headfirst in love with the salty draft wafting off the horizon, had signed up as an ensign when he turned eighteen. Nine years and he had climbed steadily through the ranks, standing tall and proud as the deputy commander of a vessel that belonged in the family of the pride of Altea's navy. The _Atlas_ , Hunk told him, might not have been his first love, but it certainly was his last.

Keith shakes his head politely when he's asked about a lover, laughing bemusedly as he tells the new man to town how he's absorbed in work. Hunk seems delightfully impressed when Keith tells him he works as a junior editor in his brother's daily, requesting him to introduce them any time he found the leisure to. Keith finds out Hunk was sweet on a farmer's daughter back home, but she fell sick of some strange disease and got carried away while he was at sea. He'd been devastated when he returned, but he made peace with the fact that she loved him as dearly as he did. Keith watches him twist a well-worn ring on his finger, and says nothing.

A few people wave at them as they pass by, the baker calling for Keith and Hunk to come back to visit soon. He glances over, watching Hunk look around the street with ill concealed anticipation and sheer, unbridled joy. "If you don't mind me asking, Mr Garrett," Keith asks after a while, skipping a stone to the side, "why did you decide to move to Westingwood?"

"Ah, nonsense, please call me Hunk," the man chides, good natured and pleasant. He hums distantly, gaze following a pair of young girls giggling as they haul a massive basket laden with flowers into an alley leading back home. "my new naval base is situated a day's journey from here, and Westingwood was the closest town to shore. Besides, one of my dearest friends had decided to move here with his family as well, seeing as he's assigned to the same base along Marmora."

"You followed him here, then?" Keith asks, waving back with a smile at the girls before they disappeared from view. Next to him, Hunk chuckles.

"It's hard not to, he happens to be my acting commander as well as a childhood companion closest to my heart," he admits with a loose shrug. He claps Keith on the back firmly, face breaking into a smile. "What say you we head over somewhere for lunch, yes? I would have invited you over to ours, but we still seem to be a bit plagued by the mess."

"Oh no, that's absolutely alright, I'd love it if you came over for lunch, I'm sure Shiro's already started on the food," Keith suggests, gesturing broadly to a small path cutting off track from the main street. Hunk dips his head courteously in an inclination for him to lead, and Keith sets off down the dusky little twisted by-lane, regaling his new companion with fresh stories of the town's inhabitants and pointing out the various shops lining the path back home, each with a fascinating history stitched into its fabric.

Keith spots Adam stepping out of the apothecary, and the man in question flags them down. His horn rimmed glasses glint in the beams of light spraying from the lamps at the entrance, and when he smiles, the scar running down one half of his face shifts with his mouth. Hunk neither comments on it nor lets his gaze linger too long, merely shakes Adam's hand warmly and introduces himself as the deputy commander of a vessel down at the base in Marmora. Adam lights up, joining the two of them on their long trudge through the grassy slopes to the lone house on the hill, making the young man laugh pleasantly with every interjected tale of drunken shenanigans while he was serving in king Alfor's military.

Shiro's face brightens the minute he opens the door to the smiling trio, and Hunk drops into a reverent bow as soon as he recognises the familiar shock of white hair and the long thin scar running along the bridge of a strong nose. Shiro chuckles, reaching out to clap their guest on the back with his hand before he gently ushers them inside. Keith sits next to Hunk at the table, smiling and nodding along at all the right places and quietly making sure everyone is fully immersed into the conversation. ( _oh yes and when did you sign up in the military, sir Shirogane— I was helping cart a few survivors through the battlefield— please, call me Shiro— accidentally stepped on some land mines— does it bother you, having to be— you learn to get— besides, I already have my family so I don't have to—_ )

Keith wakes up screaming in his bed, heaving up his empty stomach and thinking of blood soaking through his fingers, as red as a goldman's plume. He shakes and trips and scrubs at his hands until they're raw and aching, and grabs his coat as he sets off down to the market.

Coran makes sure to keep the apothecary open at all times of day, especially since the town houses old wounds and missing limbs and gouged scars from the first war on people who scream their throats dry in the middle of the night and need to be put to sleep. Keith tightens the garment around himself, striding swift and sharp across the dew damp slopes to the lone shop in the marketplace with warm golden light spilling out of its window. It seems deserted, he realises with a gratefully quickening lope to his steps, and he's just making to hurry his way through the back door when he sees them.

They're both new to him, both long limbed and draped in clothes that reek of high-end fashion and entire treasure chests bursting with gold coins. The woman is pale, pretty with long flowing yellow hair and delicate in the way one might handle a jagged piece of glass. The man, on the other hand, is lean and angular, dressed in a silken blue shirt that's spilling off his shoulders with one hand closed around the woman's pinched waist and the other raking viciously through her hair. Her head is tipped back, throat bruised and purpling, and her lips spill little gasps and the occasional whines when the man bites down particularly hard on her skin. She flutters her eyes when she sees Keith standing a little way off, horrified and a tad inquisitive, and her mouth stretches into a smile.

"Why, _hello_ , pretty boy," she croons in a nasally, affected tone, "come to join?"

Keith scowls darkly, his head beginning to spin. The woman's smile grows lecherous the longer she stares at him, eyes twinkling in the dull glimmer of light from the shop. "No, ma'am, thank you for the offer, but I'll be leaving now."

"What lovely manners he has, Lance," she laughs, the sound breaking off halfway when the man noses along with an uninterested hum at the reddening marks on the column of her throat. "With that hair and that pale, pale skin, come to think of it, he'd make such a prim and proper bride, yes?"

Keith grimaces with displeasure, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. "Worry about your own fortunes, ma'am. I can assure you if I'd ever be bride to a man, he would be much feater than the one latched onto your form in this very instant."

The taut cords of the man's shoulders stiffen at his words, and he turns to look at him so sharply that for a moment, Keith is worried at the sharp snap of his neck as he swivels in place. Blue eyes, sharper than swords and colder than ice bore into him as Keith stumbles backwards, almost missing the first step of the landing that leads down to the backdoor. Instead, he raises his jaw firmly, stubbornly, his hand clenched tight around the curling end of the rail, and bows. "Have a good day, you two, but do head back soon, will you? The town gets awfully cold this late at night."

The man's dark laugh follows him when he bursts through the doors of the apothecary with twitching fingers and flushed skin, thinking of burnt copper and singing coins and the pearly gleam of a smile in the dark. The potion works well that night, and Keith dreams of nothing but blue and bronze.

.

Life goes on.

The people of the town still bow politely every time Keith passes by with Shiro or Adam in tow, although now the stoops are mostly friendly and less grateful than they were when the two brought the men back home from the first war. The men and women are still lovely and quiet people, minding their own business and keeping their heads down, never raising their voices, never stepping out of line. The fields still smell of the tangible freshness of new blossoms, and the sun bakes hot and insistent upon the cobbled pathways that wind their way through the narrow lanes and intersecting streets.

The spring festival had been a success, the scalding firewater and icy wine flowing down parched throats with bottles being traded from hand to eager hand. Keith had mostly stayed in a corner, content to nurse a pint of mead in the shadows of the candied fruit stall as he watched his brother and his partner mingle seamlessly with the town's inhabitants, slipping from the throes of one conversation and finding their footing right in the midst of another. Katherine had found him before an hour had passed, leaning contentedly against his side as she picked at the folds of her starched maroon dress. Keith had laughed fondly, dropping a kiss into her braided hair and holding his mug out of reach when she tried to hazard a sip.

Hunk had come up to them soon enough, dressed smartly in a fitting suit and a dazzling smile lighting up his face when he greeted the two of them. It seemed he had taken as quick a liking to the Holts' daughter on their first meeting a fortnight ago as Keith first had, and he had joined them in easy conversation about their lives soon enough. The two of them had spent the next hour pointing out each person at the festival to Hunk, and before long, they'd come across a lot that the latter had waved over furiously.

The McClains were vibrant, to say it in the most polite way possible. Each of them— from the sleeping baby in Marco's arms to the wrinkles sewn into their _abuela's_ face— had been a thunderstorm of novelty and intrigue. Veronica, the eldest sister, had shot Keith a devious smile, laughing at his flabbergasted expression as she said _I'm so terribly sorry darling, we're all married here, such a pity Lance didn't move to Westingwood earlier, yes_ , and Hunk had rolled his eyes in disbelief. Maria McClain had kissed Keith’s cheek lovingly, smoothing down his collar and stepping forward to embrace Hunk as a son borne from her own womb. Fortunately, as Katie was lost in conversation with the eldest McClain son (who was a naval captain posted in Balmera, Keith listened in), Hunk had stepped up next to him and steered him away, assuring him that _I swear I saw Lance and Nyma head this way, let me take you to them_.

They were right there, the two strangers from the other night, and thankfully, they were both properly dressed this time around. The woman— Nyma, Hunk had introduced her as she smiled so wide and bright at Keith— was dressed in a flowing yellow dress, her glowing hair tucked away neatly under a broad brimmed hat. She had sauntered forward to place a patronising kiss against Keith’s cheek before touching her fiance's arm, and then simpered away to where her sisters stood around with their husbands. The wine from Naxcela, she'd called in a promise thrown over her shoulder before she disappeared into the crowd, was worth the aching head the next morning.

Commander Lance McClain, surprisingly enough, had not spoken a word to Keith about the events of the other night. He had just stood there, silent and stunningly charming with his chiming laugh and his lean built, and his fingers had played with the stem of his glass all the while that Hunk and Keith stood there with him. The way his shirt stretched over his torso when he leaned against the stall was downright infuriating, the sinful slide of the fabric making Keith shift uncomfortably. Funnily enough, the young naval officer hadn't said anything about it as he continued talking to his friend about the changes in ranks down at Marmora, and when the two of them would set out for their duties again. _I heard it's cold out at night here in Westingwood, will it not be better if we set out at dawn_ , he had asked Keith with a smile somewhere in the middle of the conversation. His lips had twitched at the corners as he spoke, all bold strokes and scarlet tints. And wasn't red the colour of rage, Keith had wondered to himself.

Three hours later, the whistling snap and crackle of fireworks exploding into fractals of light against the midnight sky had become their refuge. Bodies pressed furiously against each other, Keith’s fingers had scraped against the rough stones of the wall as he'd struggled to hold himself upright, feeling each and every sliver of flesh peeking through McClain's shirt pressing against his chest. The words he'd spoken were quiet, spilling from him in so sudden and unprecedented a way that Keith blamed it on the man's mouth sliding wet and vicious down his shoulders, so hushed that they could have been mistaken as a drunken breath, a visceral exhalation, a small _does she make you feel this way too, your Nyma_ , and the man hadn't even paused in dragging his lips down the crease of Keith’s knee, not even a moment's halt before he answered, _if you're coherent enough to ask me questions Mr Kogane, I'm compelled to believe I'm not doing a good enough job returning the favour to you_. And that was that.

So, life goes on.

In hindsight, Keith realises all of it wasn't that sudden or surprising in any way. They didn't have the innocence of a first kiss, no tender brushes, no moth's wing-soft caresses, no gentleness or feelings of comfort. They were hard, fast and brutal, slamming against the shadows sprayed over alley walls and colliding with the brass knocker of an empty house on the hill. Keith had read about it once, in a book he'd perused under the flickering flame of a lopsided candle. Comets, they called it, left massive indentations when they exploded against the sterile, barren earth. He couldn't recall what those deep gouges in the skin of the earth were called, though.

( _craters_ , Lance had answered him one night, lips cracked in a bemused smile, hair swept back from his forehead lazily, fingertips dancing across the small of Keith’s back, _they're called craters_ , he said, and then he'd dipped down to place his mouth against Keith’s shoulder and it felt like a brand, a blazing mark, a little crater of their own.)

.

The days and the weeks all slip and slide into months, spring floats away to the beating heat of summer, and Keith lies back against Lance's chest and watches the midnight breeze sway and dance through the lilting treetops. Summer melts away into the fiery blaze of fall, and Keith traces patterns on Lance's arms and sees the fallen leaves trail over the cobblestones as if singing tales of a god's chariot rumbling past. The days and the weeks and the months all slip and slide into one constant, recurring, inescapable thought that rings over and over in his head like the bells of church. _Lance, Lance, Lance_.

It leaves Keith feeling heady and a little crazy, the polite nods when they pass each other in the streets, the courteous greetings to each other's families, the telling smirks that the young man shoots his way when he thinks nobody's looking. It leaves Keith feeling like he's stepping on clouds, when the young commander pins his wrists to the small cubicle of his office and whispers syrupy nothings into the skin of his stomach. It leaves Keith feeling a little and yet so, so hopelessly lost whenever Lance laughs over the table at dinner, holding a niece or a nephew in his arms, the candles casting a warm glow over his face.

It leaves Keith feeling a little sick and shrivelled, every time Nyma stands with her head pillowed against Lance's chest and the McClains and the Garretts and the Holts and the entire town of Westingwood coos and fawns and flutters over the happy couple. His heart aches with all the intensity and burn of a cutlass dug into his chest, but he smiles at them and walks out to the patio. Hunk follows him out a few times, Keith is almost certain he knows, but saying it out loud would only serve to remind him how hopeless his fantasies are, no matter how heartfelt, no matter how genuine.

And so, Keith says nothing, and he continues to feel.

When the war comes, it doesn't arrive with cannon fire or piercing gunshots. It slinks into their lives slowly and steadily, missing faces and lost names that Keith dutifully looks over before sending them to print. It slides in through their letterboxes as proclamations of a promotion, the McClains and the Garretts rejoicing as they hold the ivory paper high above their heads. Soon and sooner still, the temporary order becomes permanent when the old commodore and the _Atlas_ ' captain remain at sea and never return, and Keith watches with a resonant pain as Lance and Hunk step up to the empty stations with their firm stance and their taut jaws.

Fall bleeds into winter, and Lance and Hunk start staying away for longer. A lot of young men from the town sign up when Luis McClain returns from Marmora on Lance's request and orders with a roster, but one look at Shiro's blank face and Adam's trembling hands and Keith backs away. He sees so many of the youngsters join, boys even younger than he with fresh stubbled chins and the lanky build of not growing into their bodies yet. Shiro wakes him up screaming that night, and Keith lies awake hearing Adam murmur quietly to him until the pale sun glazes his window at dawn.

The next time Keith turns up to the McClains' for lunch, veronica pulls him aside so harshly that he almost drops his wine. "they're thinking of a marriage the next time Lance comes home," she says to him, eyes solemn and mouth downturned in a frown, and Keith excuses himself early that day to go back home. He throws up until he falls back against the wood, and heads over to the apothecary for a vial of sleeping potion. Dreams don't come to him that night, but his nightmares come to life the next morning.

Lance comes back home and he's swamped with his family and Nyma's, all of them crowding and gathering round and throwing around words like chapel and wedding, and Keith feels so unwanted in that rush that he leaves. He walks back home, and Shiro and Adam don't ask him anything about the tears cutting tracks into his cheeks.

They argue that night, Lance and Keith, when Lance arrives to meet him long after Westingwood had fallen asleep. They talk about a future, something Lance had once promised him in a drunken and hazy stupor one midsummer night that he'd do anything to give all of his to Keith. Keith says so many things he wanted to, he leaves a hundred more unspoken. He watches Lance go, feels the beginnings of a storm rock the sea and the wind, and thinks, _come back to me_.

Hunk knocks at the door around lunch the next morning, there to inform Keith with a grim face that Lance left that morning and that he'd called off the wedding before he began the journey to Marmora. He holds out a wristwatch to him, an old and well-loved piece with leather straps and a cracked dial, and when he presses it into Keith’s hand, he feels the engraved _L.M_. resting snugly against his palm. Hunk pulls him into an embrace, drawing away and smiling. _I'll bring him back to you_ , he promises, _just don't forget us while we're gone, Kogane_.

The days and the weeks all slip and slide into months, and Westingwood grows far too quiet for anyone's liking. The roads seem deserted, a little too empty, the alleys a little too dark. Katherine cries when she comes to visit him at work, and there's something in the decisive set of her shoulders that makes Keith tense a little in worry. News comes to them very rarely, the information clipped and precise, too blunt and formal to ever feel personal or just a little bit humane. Seasons go by, the war continues and Westingwood holds it breath and waits for its sons to come back home.

.

They send the letter a month after the incident. It's hilarious, in a wry and twisted way, how the Lance who couldn't be tamed by roaring waves and scathing accusations was shoved into a simple ivory sheet of paper. _It is our deepest regret to inform you_ , the letter drones, and Keith doesn't even bother to sit it out till the end. He gets up, his chair dragging roughly through the dirt lining the abandoned church pews and shrugs off Allura's hand when she reaches out to touch his wrist. What was the point, he muses to himself as he gasps into the air and feels the sun slicing bronze across his face, what did it even matter any more?

They send commander Garrett's remains the following week. They had washed onshore, buffeted against the jagged rocks of some far-off coastal town with a name too sedged to pronounce, and they'd hauled them out two hours after employing local folk and the fishermen's nets. The screams on noticing the long polished box pull up in a one horse carriage at the church had been jarring, echoing and resounding, the shrill howls piercing the blanket of silence and tremulous anticipation that had cloaked the sleepy little town. Keith feels sick as he watches Katie start crying as soon as they place the coffin down, and at his side, Allura claps a hand over her mouth in horror. It wasn't just the Garretts, those soft mouthed and gentle eyed souls, but the whole of Westingwood that had lost a son with that one.

It isn't long before the caskets start arriving, long wooden beds for the dead nailed shut with iron and lowered into the same mud that caked all of their skin. The town cries for the young, for all the lives that had been lost to the insatiable sea, the primal brute that had unhinged its jaws long enough to swallow them all whole and then fell silent when they screamed for answers. Keith waits, and watches the funeral processions of people he'd talked to over the counter at the baker's, or stumbled into at festivals, or nodded politely towards in church on Sunday mornings. Day after day, the mourners grow, the waves of black in the cemetery roll more and more tumultuous, but no word of Lance comes by.

With the icy promise of winter at the door swaying with the breeze, two men in uniform knock at Shiro's door one morning, wearing the deep indigo of the navy with their starched and crisp collars and matching expressions of sombreness. _We're so sorry sir_ , they explain with vacant eyes and hard lined mouths, we _found the cause to be an explosion in the boiler room_. The storm had knocked equipments and arsenal out of alignment, they're told— Shiro and Adam and Keith— the only option had been to abandon the ship. _Captain McClain, sir_ , they say, shifting uncomfortably, he _had been shepherding the sailors who'd been trapped in there to the deck_. One of them bows his head in silent reverence, and the other sighs, long and resigned, defeated in a way no war could ever dream of achieving. _We searched for weeks, we checked each neighbouring shore, but— but we couldn't find him_.

They hold a memorial for the sailors the following week, right there by the long rows of polished tombstones and shining marble, each with a name and a date and a detached, impersonal message scrawled into it. Veronica comes up to him, the black hat on her head knocked askew, and tugs him into an embrace that is as searing as the tears seeping into his shoulder. Colleen Holt sobs a few aisles away, the hem of her dress stained with fresh mud as she kneels before the graves of her husband and son. Keith searches for Katherine, looking over the bowed heads for a glimpse of the scruffy hair and the familiar green dress with rips down its sleeves. He comes up empty.

Shiro makes a valiant attempt to speak, standing tall and strong at the pulpit they dragged in from the church, his hands curled into grappling hooks over the rough hewn edge of it. He makes it a quarter of the way, thanking the men for their service and praying for their safe passage to the heavens, and breaks down into harrowed tears right there and then. Adam steps up politely, continuing right where Shiro left off, his voice as sharp and clear as the serrated slash across his face. He lists off the names of the slain one by one, soldiering ahead without a pause. Keith notices the tremor in his voice when he pauses at Lance's name, and looks away.

Six months go by, and they never find his body. _He's at sea, right where he always wanted to be_ , Maria McClain smiles through the tears in her eyes one evening over dinner, and she wraps her arms around Keith so tightly that he feels the fractured faults in his heart pressing right against her own. She kisses his temple, brushing the hair off his face with a fond look, and holds him close and closer still. _Promise me you won't disappear on us, sweetheart_ , she whispers in his ear, the salt from her tears disappearing into his shirt, _please, you must promise me that_.

But that's the thing about Keith, he's never made good on his promises. He calls it a holy retribution, a punishment for breaking his oaths, a fitting response to his empty swears. Three days later, Adam finds his body when he steps out to get the mail on a Saturday morning. It takes two men to bring it down from where it's hopelessly tangled in the wires of the electricity poles. A small crowd gathers as they lower his battered form onto the carefully sheared grass of the front lawn. Shiro takes one look at the gouges marred into his brother's pale flesh, and starts to sob.

It's a closed casket funeral, a quick event that makes it no less painful for the ones who attend it. Shiro sits off in a corner, speaking to no one and looking at the rows upon rows of silent graves with a tired resignation. Adam sits beside him, a hand on his, looking on quietly as they lower Keith into the earth. The casket goes down, further and deeper, farther and farther still, until it disappears from view entirely. Shiro tosses his head back as he lets out a wounded cry, a pained and devastatingly wretched sound, and falls against Adam. He says nothing, lifting an arm to drape it over Shiro's quivering shoulders.

In the little town of Westingwood lies a grave, a little way off, under the shade of an ancient oak tree. _Here lies Keith Kogane, beloved brother and friend_ , it reads in simple crafted lettering. Adam reaches out a shaking hand and places a wristwatch next to the headstone marker, old and cracked glass screen with worn leather straps. There's a small inscription on its underside, barely visible, felt more by the brush of fingertips against the smooth metal, the raised words reading _L.M_. The wind picks up a little, sweeping quick and sharp and curious across the grounds, and Allura— watching from near the gates— sighs heavily.

Shiro presses his forehead to the ground in quiet reverence, feeling Adam's hand rest upon his shoulder, a warm and familiar weight. ( _don't let go, don't you ever let go_ , he begs the both of them— to the boy with ocean eyes and a syrup sweet voice who was lost to the horizon, and to the boy he'd raised like his own blood, with a crooked smile and furious crimson blood who followed him to the end of the world.) It's sad and it's melancholy and it's a very painful end to a tale of lovers, ones that loved as clear and radiant as Lance and Keith, but somewhere in his heart, Shiro knows. He looks to the sky, right where the ochres and greens of the tree blend into the violets of the dusk drawn heaven, and he knows it's not over yet, for it will never be.

Shiro rises with a quiet smile, and together, they walk back home to the little house on the hill. Some things, you cannot paint in just black and white. Some tales, he tells himself, don't have an ending. They just start anew.

**Author's Note:**

> holy fucking shit that was sad  
> please please comment and let me know your views on this, i live for validation and i also love you  
> so, i mentioned my final exams right? the ones which'll determine my college? yeah those are starting in a week and i'm tired and sleep deprived but here you go because i love you the most


End file.
